Review: Her Smell

by Chris Feil

Some audiences may be unprepared for the full force slap that Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell has in store. It pulls no punches from the jump, immediately plopping us into the halls of a hellish backstage captured in serpentine camera fluidity. We’re immediately caught in the circus of early-90s addict punk rocker Becky Something, a monstrous and damaged creation from Perry’s muse Elisabeth Moss. And just as you get used to the manic construction around her, as Perry douses us in a fecund sound design and sweaty neon palette, the film shifts into something quite moving and rigorous on all of its levels. This is something more ambitious and soul-baring than the music dramas to which we’ve grown accustomed.

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Review: Brie Larson's "Unicorn Store"

by Anne Marie

With Captain Marvel crossing the $300million mark at the box office, Netflix has capitalized on Brie Larson's booming popularity to acquire her 2017 directorial debut. Unicorn Store is a coming-of-age comedy that happens to also star buddy and co-Avenger Samuel L. Jackson. And while Larson fans will enjoy watching the actress glitter (sometimes literally) across the screen for an untidy 92 minutes, ultimately the star's freshman effort comes off as more style than subsance.

Written by Samantha McIntyre (Married), Unicorn Store tells the self-consciously magical story of a twenty-something failed artist named Kit (Larson), who gets a second chance when she's offered the chance to fulfill her childhood dream...of owning a unicorn. After she fulfills some obligations, of course. The premise is purposely absurd, and for the most part, Larson adeptly navigates between the more magically bizarre scenes of straw-dying and stable-building, and the more quotidian (and creepy) B plot wherein Larson’s character tries to prove herself at a temp job with a predatory boss...

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Farewell, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

by Dancin' Dan

When the history of Peak TV is written, there better be a whole chapter devoted to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom's musical comedy managed to last four seasons on The CW is amazing enough. But doing so with a diverse cast, while constantly pushing the boundaries of what network television would allow to be broadcast in prime time, taking anti-feminist tropes and twisting them around until they become feminist, and spotlighting mental health issues in a sensitive, impactful way is a miracle.

On Friday night, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend aired its series finale. Magically, the show was able to end on its own terms, giving us the full four-season arc its creators had always envisioned. And what an arc it's been [SPOILERS AHEAD]...

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Review: The Wind

by Chris Feil

Capturing the emotional and topographical emptiness of the American West, director Emma Tammi’s The Wind is a horror film that succeeds through its sparseness. The desert landscape that surrounds first settler Lizzy Macklin and her husband Isaac becomes a horrifying abyss of the unknown. As Lizzy stares out at her uninhabited surroundings, waiting patiently for more enterprising souls to arrive, that abyss stares right back into her.

What unfolds in this slim and mighty pickax of horror is a terrifying case of the plains. It sure proves psychologically claustrophobic looking out on the unending expanse of a home on the range, where yesterday and today, real and imagined all blur together in isolate malaise. Don't confuse the film's modesty for a lack of depth, for this creaky well runs deep.

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Stage Door: Isabelle Huppert is "The Mother"

Since we're in the thick of theater season with the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards coming up, that means an extra stage review here and there! Here's Eric Blume...

One of TFE’s favorite actresses, Isabelle Huppert, currently stars off-Broadway in writer Florian Zeller’s new play, The Mother.  As you might guess, she kills it in Zeller’s non-linear play. The Mother is challenging and archly theatrical, with scenes being acted and re-enacted, timelines being blurred, and reality and fantasy being blended in gloriously unclear ways to achieve both a distancing and an immediacy.  This is intelligent and precise writing, not an easy ride for theatergoers, and demanding in its shifts both temporal and stylistic.

But Huppert is deep in character as always, sinking into the skin of the matriarch in the four-person family play...

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